Well, an old topic seems to be getting some whitewash this week, i.e., Ken Burns' update of his baseball documentary.
Mr. Burns (not the boss on the Simpsons, he's less despicable) had his "Tenth Inning", part 2 aired tonight and I watched about as much as I could stomach. Apparently the viewer was supposed to believe that taking steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs is no big deal, just another charming episode in baseball's glorious history.
I watched a solid 10 minutes of the glorification of Barry Bonds, with fans cheering as he hammered homer after homer. Judging from the footage they showed (and my memory of that season) there were probably about 15 monster, 400-ft plus homers on Barry's fabled run on the record. But also, there seemed to be quite a few that were home runs by maybe 5 feet or so. Somehow, nobody seems to ask this question: what if ol' Barry had not injected his way into being the incredible hulk -- wouldn't his 'record' have been a lot closer to 57 or 58? Oh no, that's blasphemy -- all is forgiven by mindless baseball nuts like Mr. burns. Their capacity for self-delusion is amazing. These same clowns will somberly criticize any player using a corked bat, but a corked (or cooked or coked) body? No problem.
I sometimes wonder how this cavalier 'boys will be boys' attitude might be applied to other sports. Maybe the NFL will look the other way while linemen conceal taser guns in their jerseys. Or maybe the bolder the better - why not have NASCAR allow those 'Greek' spikey axels that nearly chopped up Ben Hur? Hell, give those soccer players shotguns - anything to make that game less boring . . .
Well, I realize there's at least a couple million baseball 'fans' who disagree with me, but there's a similar number who think Rush Limbaugh is telling the unvarnished truth. Think maybe they're the same peolple?